Golden Brick
These building bricks composed of pure gold are the most valuable items a hero can find. Only these are used to build temples. For a complete Temple, a hero needs 1000 of these rare items. Though when a hero gains one, the temple completion percentage increases by 0.1% but only when the temple is 100% complete do the golden bricks become bold artifacts; now being stored in the inventory once another one has been obtained via the usual means. Once this happens, the gold bricks behave like any other bold artifact and can therefore be sold for money. However, the range that a golden brick can be sold for is 940-1160 gold coins, which has caused much annoyance since it varies greatly from the stock market prices seen in the Godville Times daily. Obtaining One There is a plethora of ways a hero can obtain a golden brick: * Purchase one from a trader when the hero has enough gold, and desire to buy one (over which their god has no influence). * Receive one as a reward for completing a quest. * Randomly (but rarely), have one fall from the sky with an inscribed message from the hero's god. * Find one when digging for treasure. * Won as a prize for winning in an arena duel. * Capture it from the defeated hero in a skirmish. * Randomly find one (sometimes even two) inside Deus Ex Machina, box with a question mark or Pandora's Box when they are activated by the god. * Have one to three bold artifacts already in her/his inventory converted into gold bricks when the god activates the Alchemical Transmuter or the Philosopher's Stone. * Have one magically forged from approximately 3000 Gold coins through the god's Influence, by encouraging the hero/heroine; for example, a count of 3200 gold coins is usually sufficient. Properties of A Brick Width: 11 cm Height: 7.6 cm Length: 23 cm Therefore volume: 1922.8 cc Density of gold: 19.3 g/cc Element Symbol: Au (from the latin Aurium) Atomic number: 79 Atomic mass: 196.996569 gmol^-1 Electronegativity: 2.54 (Pauling Scale) Element Category: Transition metal Why? Why was gold chosen? It has multiple advantages: Hero Advantages Gold is considered the holiest of materials, though not quite the rarest, and has been since the beginning of civilization. It's very nonreactive (it's a noble metal), therefore it can can stand up to the strength of the elements. It is also the most malleable and ductile of all metals, making it easy to shape it into bricks. The only downside is that gold tends to be very expensive and golden bricks even more so. Over the years many heroes have gone against their gods' wishes and decided that the best material for the bricks of their temple should be platinum since it is rarer. Other heroes use lead thinking it is heavier and harder to knock down, only to be disappointed when they discover that gold is 70% denser than lead. There is the rare breed of hero who has used the same logic, but has gone one step further and used uranium. These chemically challenged heroes are also thwarted, when it turns out that uranium is not after all the densest naturally occurring element, and after 4.47 billion years, half of the temple turns to lead anyway. Uranium also features the side effect of radioactivity, which heroes don't have any knowledge of, but since gods routinely heal and resurrect their heroes this unpleasant effect goes unnoticed. Then there is a famous story of one hero who decided to build their temple out of the rarest material they could find in order to honor their god sufficiently. Unfortunately for them, this turned out to be tritium and so the temple merely diffused into the environment before it could be assembled fully. It is for these reasons that heroes normally tend to use gold. Clever heroes actually alloy their gold bricks with nickel as this makes them a lot tougher and provides further support for the temple. God Advantages Why have Gods ordered their heroes to undertake such a hard task as to collect bricks made of gold? For evil gods, it is because they wish their heroes to suffer as much as possible, yet complete the task eventually so that their hero is the best. There are plenty of sensible reasons for choosing gold as the primary building material for a temple, though. For a start, gold is nicely reflective, making it extremely easy for gods to see they're shiny temples from way up high in the sky. Gold is also renowned for it's electrical conductivity too which makes it a prime candidate for conducting divine thunderbolts to misbehaving heroes trying to hide in their temples. One of the main reasons though is that gold has the relatively low melting point of 1064.18 degrees Celsius, enabling gods to easily melt the gold coins heroes collect into the bricks they need for their temple. This gives the gold coins another use apart from being currency, which makes for added productivity.